The longtime rising star of the drums in critics' polls has become a bona fide, go-to drum maestro who’s in the midst of a creative bonanza of music. The leader of her adventurous ten-year-old ensemble, Boom Tic Boom, Allison Miller doesn’t flinch at the assessment. “We’re jazz people,” she says. “We’re in the moment.”

There’s no keeping Joe Lovano idle on the recording front. After nearly three decades as the preeminent star on Blue Note Records, the tenor saxophonist has found a new home at ECM Records as a leader with Trio Tapestry, a sensitively lyrical interplay with pianist Marilyn Crispell and his longtime colleague drummer Carmen Castaldi.

From the first measures on pianist/keyboardist James Francies’ spirited Blue Note Records debut album, Flight, you sense there is something atypical about to unfold. There’s nothing predictable the rest of the way—straight-up lyrical beauties, r&b drives and three divergent vocal tracks—which is what the 23-year-old Houston-born leader wanted his first album to achieve.

The world has never heard a Charlie Haden & Brad Mehldau duet album. Impulse! records has now made it possible with the release of Long Ago and Far Away, their first duo appearance, recorded live in 2007.